"Leinster, Murray - Plague" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

He made a careful visual examination with the electron telescope, and grinned at Sally.
УPicking us out at even a thousand miles would be a miracle,Ф he told her. СWe can go in for conversation and such things until the Navy decides that somebody was mistaken or we are dead. Meanwhile IТm going to see if I can make that Thing a little more uncomfortable still.Ф
The Thing was in the metal fabric of the ship. It could move anywhere that a conductor existed. But it was not, apparently, possible for it to extract subsistence from metal. It was cannibalisticЧlife which liyed by devouring life. For some reason the life force in a male bodyЧa manТs bodyЧwas not suitable for it. It could only derive nourishment from the vital force in the cells of a womanТs tissues. Yet its metabolism continued. It gave off cosmic rays in metal, as in human flesh. It must be that it lost energy while in nonliving matter, and regained energyЧfedЧin living
stuff. If it could be kept from any access to Sally for a long enough time, it might starve, simply because it had radiated away in cosmic rays all the energy it possessed.
Sally smiled at Ben. They were bound to each other not only by feeling, but by the fact that they stood together literally~ against the universe. All the power of all the nations upon all the planets of all the suns of the Galaxy was opposed to them. They defied the pomposity of the brass hats of the universe simply by remaining alive. All authority demanded their death. Thousands of ships, with their number constantly increasing, and hundreds of thousands of men were- devoting their every effort to the discovery of a sixty-foot space cruiser designed for sport, in which Ben Sholto and Sally Hale carried a plague which had wiped out ten million people. And fat men in swivel chairs grew purple with rage as stinging rebukes passed from higher to lower officialdom.
УConversation?Ф said Sally, smiling. СWeТve been togetherЧhow long, Ben? WeТll be together all the rest of our lives. Maybe only we two, hiding through all the years to come!Ф
УMaybe,Ф admitted Ben, grinning, Уin that case weТll hold hands.Ф
She put her hand in its insulating glove upon his shoulder. She bent down. He kissed her. And then he started, as if startled by a flash of light.
She straightened up, her face stricken and pale.
УItТs . . - back!Ф she said in a queer, -racked voice. УOh, Ben! ItТs back! I can . . . feel it! And itТs raging! ItТs crazy with hatred! ItТs . . . itТs . . . oh, itТs terrible!Ф
Ben swung the Geiger counter. Pointed at Sally, it clattered. No, it did not clatter. It roared. The cosmic rays created by the Thing, as shown by the counter, were many, many times more than any previous amount. It seemed as if the Thing were starved, and tore at the life force of SallyТs body with a terrible voracity.
УIТm going to pack you full of positive charges,Ф and Ben, frantically, Уand get that Thing out again, and IТm going to kill it.Ф
He worked savagely. Sally sat down. In the insulated spacesuit the Thing could not leave her, though that was what they most desperately desired. Ben swiftly put together a static generator. It was old-fashioned. It was archaic, but it was what the only possible theory called for. He worked it by hand and touched its electrode to SallyТs cheek. The existence of a high potential was instantly evidenced. SallyТs hair stirred and tried to stand out from her head.
УHow does it like that?Ф demanded Ben fiercely.
Sally babbled. And Ben had worked so swiftly and so concentratedly that he had hardly looked at her. Her face was flushed. Her eyes were bright but vague. She showed every sign of fever; high fever; fever producing delirium. But the Thing had fled, before, when the positive charge was vastly less than this.
Ben touched her cheek. A spark leaped, and she quivered a little.
СW-water, please.Ф she babbled. УIТd like a drink of water with lots of ice and pink roses in itЧФ
But the Thing should be out, now. Ben turned off the lights to look at her. And she still glowed. The Thing had not come out.

A battered space-tramp was ordered blasted out of space as a Уdangerous objectФ by a sub-commissioner when in defiance of orders not to land in the Beta Cetacia solar system it dived toward the surface of an uninhabited planet. It had reported desperately that its crew was nearly out of food and the air-supply would last for only four more days. But it could show no proper clearance from its last port-of-landing, and was suspected of smuggling. The Navy ship which trailed it did not destroy it until it had landed and its crew had escaped, and was ordered to return to port for arrest and disciplinary action.
Three thousand colonists were refused landing-permits on Thetis IX, because of missing papers they swore they had turned over on the day of their arrival. (The papers were found months later in an under-clerkТs desk drawer. He had forgotten to forward them. For the credit of the Service they were destroyed and the affair hushed up.)
The sub-commissioner on Axcturis V issued an order forbidding criticism of the Administrative Service until criticized conditions had been reported to and passed upon by the Administrative Service Board of Appeals. On the same day he denied four requests for appeals to the Administrative Service Board of Appeals.
On Sirius II, one Arthur Matheson was ordered arrested for making scientific experiments endangering the authority of the Galactic Commission. The experiments were those which led ultimately to the Matheson Matter-transmitter.
And it was reported to Reserve Headquarters that Ben SholtoТs position had been approximately determined and his capture was a matter of hours.
But Ben was frantically fighting the intangible Thing which occupied SallyТs body. Three times he charged Sally, in the insulated spacesuit, with the highest potential the static generator could produce. Three times he drove the Thing to frenzy. And three times he released the charge. The number of Things which roved triumphantly about the metalwork of the small ship increased visibly. There were at least a dozen. But SallyТs body continued to glow. The Geiger counter continued to make a roaring noise rather than a clattering. The ThingЧsomehow Ben assumed that it was the original oneЧremained, tearing at the life which remained in Sally, consuming it and raking revenge for the hurt it had suffered.
The CC phone muttered and muttered. Once or twice it spoke loudly and distinctly. Some one of the searching ships was very near. Then there came the blasting tone-signal of a General Order, and Ben automatically touched the volume-control, half-crazed as he was -by the urgency of the problem the Thing presented.
He had fired a single positron-blast at the Thing. The radiation from
that blast had been picked up. The co-ordinates on it were not accurate but now someone used that very inaccuracy in - a statistical method of making it impossible for Ben to escape from a closing-in mass of ships. It had to be assumed that Ben would listen in on Navy orders, and he had dodged past one Space-Navy cruiser by passing too close to it, too fast for its ranging devices to operate. This order forestalled any chance of his doing such a thing again. The order commanded every Navy ship within certain fixed classifications-at least two thousand ships in allЧto assume the co-ordinates of the positron-beam blast to be no better than approximate, and to use random mathematics to alter them within certain fixed limits. Each ship was then to head for its arbitrarily chosenЧbut nearbyЧ destination at maximum acceleration.
The Space-Navy would close in on the section of space in which BenТs little ship was, of course. But it would not come in in any pattern. The courses of the ships would be unpredictable. They would come together, but in a manner and at intervals and speeds none could compute. If Ben had been planning flight, he would have recognized its hopelessness. He might have dodged or crashed through any orderly arrangement of englobing ships, but this plan made evasion mathematically impossible. And, moreover, the General Order commanded the moving up of other thousands of ships behind the globe. BenТs positron-beam blast had been within or near the orbit of a meteor-stream. With all the might of the Galactic Commission behind the search for him, that meteor-stream would be examined. Every stony mass would be inspected. The task, of course, would be quite the most gigantic task ever undertaken even by the Galactic Fleet, but it ended, absolutely, any trace of hope for Ben and Sally.
But Ben had other, grimmer, more immediate reason for despair. Sally burned with fever. She had been rested, and she had been relatively strong. But now the Thing devoured her life.
Bitterly, he saw the flaw in the process which had driven the Thing out the first time. He had made SallyТs body painful for it to inhabit. The first time, the Thing had fled at its first opportunity. But it had fled. It had not been forced outЧit had been frightened out. And the Thing was intelligent. Now it realized that Ben would have to release the positive potential which caused it suffering, and that then it would cease to suffer. It endured the discomfort he created in order to work its re
venge. -
УI need,Ф said Ben desperately, while the Galactic Navy moved to destroy him and Sally babbled in delirium, Уto make something that will drag the Thing around! Drag it! Physically! And it isnТt matter! ItТs just a pack of negative charges bound together. ItТs a bound charge. A bound chargeЧФ
Electrons. A complex of electrons. It was energy on the verge of becoming matter, or matter past the verge of becoming energy. What can
you do to an electric charge? How can you make it move, save by its own tension? What can you do to a bound charge? -
УBound charge. . . bound chargeЧФ muttered Ben, with sweat beading his forehead. УSallyТs dying, and IТm thinking about bound chargesЧ the stuff kids learn in kindergarten! WhatТs a boundЧAh-h-h-h-h!Ф
He plunged at his instrument board. - He dragged ruthlessly at the CC phone. He pulled off the front panel by main strength and jerked fiercely at certain wires within it. He wanted plate-current and condensers and a tiny rectifier capsule. The condensers and rectifier went into a unit hastily built up on an insulated handle. The device terminated in a ball-contact. There was a single, long, flexible lead to the plate-current terminal of the last of the amplifying tubes of the CC phone. He worked madly, and when it was done he set the originating circuit in the phone to oscillating, and pushed the oscillation frequency up to a hundred million per second. But his take-off was from the plate of the last tube, which did not yield oscillating current, but merely pulsating. It was current which varied in voltageЧbut not in direction of flowЧa hundred million times a second. And the variations in voltage were a thousand volts or more. He checked his device, sweating, and went over to Sally. He was shaking with hope and hatred and terror. He turned off the ceiling light. Sally glowed terribly. The multiplied metabolism of the Thing made her seem almost white-hot. Ben touched the ball-contact to SallyТs cheek. He pressed the contact which let the pulsating plate-current flow into his condenser. The glow of SallyТs flesh vanished.
It was just as simple as that.
Ben raged at himself for not having done it earlier. It is taught almost in kindergartens that when one plate of a condenser is charged with positive electricity, and the second plate connected to an insulated body, that freeЧnegativeЧЧelectrons in the insulated body will be drawn into the condenser. If the condenser is taken away, it will carry those electrons with it. If its capacity and applied voltage are high enough, it will leave no free electrons in the insulated body. And the Thing was a complex of free electrons.
But it had will. It was alive. It had intelligence, and it could hate. And such an entity could resist, could figuratively dig in, could symbolically sink its teeth and claws into the body it inhabited and resist the drawing power of applied voltage, even the maximum that Ben could apply. But one can resist a steady pull where an intermittent one is irresistible. The pulsations of the plate-current, as Ben had now arranged it, caused no steady pull, but instead a series of fierce and wrenching jerks at the resistance of the Thing. The current now shook the Thing. It tore at it like a dog at the throat of a rat. The Thing was brutally torn at, and brutally released, one hundred million times in every second. Nothing, material or immaterial, could withstand such a mauling. The ThingТs grip was broken, its will shattered, its resistance made impossibleЧperhaps it was rendered unconscious! It flowed into the condenser, and the rectifier
capsule prevented its return. It was imprisoned in the small device in BenТs handЧand an unholy triumph filled him.
He turned on the lights and put the condenser-device very carefully down. He made sure to put it on an insolantite surfaceЧan insulator of practically infinite resistance. He put on insulatiuig boots. He stood before the Geiger counter, and it gave no sign. He picked up Sally and carried her for the second time to the bunk he had insulated from the floor. He laid her there. She still babbled, and her eyes were fever-bright, but the cause of that fever was gone. She would return to normalЧbut probably terribly weakЧwithin a very little time.
Ben returned to the control room. His eyes burned more brightly with hatred than SallyТs had burned with fever. He regarded his device with a vengeful satisfaction. He cut off the switch and discharged the positive plate. The knob he had touched to SallyТs cheek began to glow fiercely, even though the lights were shining. There was more than one Thing in the condenser. Freed-from the electric bondage Ben had contrived, but with no path by which to escape to the metal skin of the ship, there was a fierce glowing of the compressed, intolerably crowded Things.
He turned the Geiger counter upon the knob. It clattered furiously. He turned it away.
УAh-h-h-h!Ф he said thickly. УYouТre there, eh? And you know youТre caught!Ф
He seemed to feel waves of pure hate enveloping him. He grinned savagely.
УYouТd kill Sally, eh? YouТre smart! Maybe you can understand me, and maybe you canТt, but you know whatТs going to happen, donТt you?Ф
He took out the little positron-beam pistol. He put it within inches of the knob of metal which glowed with pulsa~ting, hating light. He pulled the trigger. There was a reddish glow from the pistol. There was a searing, intolerable light from the knob. There was an unhearable, unbearable shriekЧthe feeling of anguish and rage and insupportable hatred.
Then the knob- was merely a bit of metal attached to a condenser and an electric cord. It did not affect the Geiger counter. Ben licked his lips, his rage unappeased. He turned out the lights once more. There was a glow on the pilotТs chair. He stalked it, and touched the knob to it with the plate-current on. The glow vanished. He turned off the switch and discharged the positive plate. The knob glowed. More faintly, to be sure. There was but one Thing trapped this time. Ben laughed without mirth. He gave the Thing a blast of the positron beam. It screamed soundlessly and died.
SallyТs babbling ceased. She called faintly. Ben went to her, all savagery and hate. He gave her water.